Let's see: 300 to 600 pages constitutes a substantial chunk of Wolfram's
"The Mathematica Book". Are you prepared to read that much of his book?
If so, you would surely have found out what you needed to answer your
original question:
ToExpression appears on page 428; MemberQ appears on page 124. (I refer
to printed version of the edition for Mathematica Version 5.)
Of course whatever you read in a "Nutshell" or other such condensed
treatment, the chances are great that later, if not sooner, you'll have
a problem that cannot directly be solved by what's there and that will
require putting together a bunch of stuff, or using sophisticated
techniques, etc.
Edward Peschko wrote:
>>(1) you need
>> lst = CharacterRange["a", "h"];
>>
>>I'd suggest looking for it by typing ?*Range*. Of the choices, pick the
>>most obvious.
>>
>>(2) depending on what you want to do, any of
>> Cases[lst, "a"]
>> Position[lst, "a"]
>> MemberQ[lst, "a"]
>>
>>Will give you something to work with, although the last might be the "best".
>>Any of these pop right out of the documentation.
>>
>>This is not C++. Rather than a "15 minute search", I suggest a longer, more
>>detailed examination during which you might learn some Mathematica syntax
>>and some simple functions.
>>
>
>
> But that's the point; I, like probably a lot of other users out there are
> time constrained. They know analogous things (C++, perl, python, etc), but
> don't want to learn mathematica 'from scratch' because they have the time.
>
> That's what a decent cheatsheet (or cheatbook) would do for mathematica; reach
> out to a lot of professionals who don't really have the time to sit down and
> learn things from scratch, but need to learn by doing and applying the knowledge
> they have to Mathematica.
>
> A simple, condensed reference guide, something like a "in a nutshell" book
> by O'Reilly would do the trick.
>
> In fact, if anyone wants to write a decent - as yet unwritten - book on
> Mathematica, that's what I'd suggest doing; contacting Nancy Abila at
> nancya at oreilly.com and suggesting a "Mathematica in a nutshell" book.
>
> She's the business relations person for the online publishing group - I'm
> not sure who her counterpart is on the print side, but she would know.
>
> Anyways, the nutshell series books run from 300-600 pages, and its suitable
> for parallel development (usually 4-5 people work on these things) so they don't
> need to take over someone's life, and its nice to be published.
>
> Ed
>
> (ps - I'm not really affiliated with O'Reilly, I'd just like to buy this book
> if it ever got written!)
>
>
--
Murray Eisenberg murray at math.umass.edu
Mathematics & Statistics Dept.
Lederle Graduate Research Tower phone 413 549-1020 (H)
University of Massachusetts 413 545-2859 (W)
710 North Pleasant Street fax 413 545-1801
Amherst, MA 01003-9305